Caterer.com launches the ‘Hospitality Redeployment Hub’ to help hospitality people find new short-term alternative employment amid the Covid-19 pandemic

Whilst businesses are keen to reopen, indications are that it will be a slow return as we wait for consumer confidence to fully reappear. Changes to legislation, coupled with stringent health and safety guidelines, could also mean team sizes may well be smaller initially to meet decreased demand. This will leave many employees still on furlough or looking for new opportunities.

Finding employment until hospitality is at full strength

Hospitality has stayed strong throughout lockdown, with employers focused on innovating and supporting their people. For many this involves helping employees find work in other sectors until the industry is up to full strength again.

As lockdown hit the sector, Caterer.com recognised this urgent need to find temporary employment for hospitality people. Partnering with UKHospitality and HospitalityAction, we pivoted our jobs board to offer short term opportunities in other sectors, to workers who found themselves in need of a job until hospitality might welcome them back. Caterer.com were in a unique position to do this, at scale, due to our partnership with sister job board Totaljobs.

Short term employment for hospitality people

Since April our Caterer.com Redeployment Hub has provided an invaluable lifeline for hospitality businesses, hosting well over 33,000 thousand non-hospitality vacancies, generating 90,000 visits and nearly 44,000 job applications.

Applications to the Redeployment Hub have come from all over the UK. Roles on the hub are selected based on their likely match to transferable hospitality skills such as personality, attention to detail and flexibility. These have included roles in social care, sales, retail and cleaning. Amongst the most popular have been roles in logistics and customer service.

Providing continuous employment opportunities in hospitality and other sectors

Caterer.com remains the largest job board for the sector, and it’s encouraging to see the rapidly rising number of hospitality roles on the site as hospitality businesses begin actively hiring again. Candidate activity is also on the rise and it’s a difficult reality that not everyone will return to their roles as the sector reopens for business. For displaced and furloughed workers who need to find a new job, the Hub will continue to provide alternative employment possibilities in other sectors for as long as it is needed.

The ace card that hospitality people hold is their fantastic transferable skills.  Candidates have a wealth of knowledge and experience in many different roles and environments and employers including Amazon, Lidl, Superdrug and CareUK have benefitted from those skills during lockdown.

New opportunities for transferable hospitality skills

Whilst those in customer facing roles might feel their skills are more easily adaptable to new roles, those in the kitchen may be more hesitant. But there are new employment opportunities out there, particularly for chefs.  They may not be in a kitchen, in charge of a brigade, but these are opportunities to help develop and train the next generation of young chefs and provide an invaluable pipeline of talent.

The Food Teachers Centre is actively looking for chefs to retain as teachers, and bring their transferable skills to the classroom.  With a UK-wide shortage of food and technology teachers, chefs are ideally placed to share their food, nutrition and skills with young people.  If you can train apprentices and manage a brigade, you can manage a classroom of students.

Another opportunity on offer is with Chefs in Schools who train chefs and kitchen teams to run school kitchens with the efficiency, and passion for food, of a top restaurant. Chefs make amazing food from scratch and also teach pupils to cook. This approach radically transforms the quality of food children eat and teaches essential life skills.

Coming back, stronger than ever

Caterer.com is proud to work in partnership with the hospitality sector and proud of the adaptability shown by its people during the pandemic.  The Redeployment Hub has helped countless families by providing short-term work opportunities in sectors where, despite lack of sector-specific training, transferable skills have helped hospitality people achieve so much.

As we move forward together, strong and steady, the sector will recover, and the hospitality jobs market will bounce back.  Until it does, our Caterer.com Hospitality Redeployment Hub will continue to provide job opportunities for hospitality people in other sectors.